Aspectos generales

Numerous global studies recommend that autonomy of practice for teachers is vital for professional growth, enjoyment and collegiality, which are beneficial to teacher development and for the application and adaption of reform (Lee & Nie, 2014; Schneider & Kipp, 2015; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2014). Autonomy or teacher agency permits teachers the freedom to grow professionally with diverse approaches to teaching, allowing them to develop experience and flexibility, further enabling development of professional resilience. The literature supports the view that resilience is a reflexive characteristic for teachers, which facilitates adaption of teacher practice as needed, particularly during education change. A teacher’s creativity or autonomy within their role is empowered

through the development and support of valuable and flexible teaching experience (Lefstein & Perath, 2014; Weaven & Clark, 2015), where “teachers are among those most responsible for carrying out the policies adopted, their sense of

ownership of policy is crucial to its effective implementation” (Lefstein & Perath,

2014, p. 34).

The literature suggests that a crucial aspect of professional development is the “nurturing and sustaining of a professional culture of continuous

improvement, collective responsibility and shared leadership in and across schools” (Fullan, Rincón-Gallardo, & Hargreaves, 2015, p. 7) and wider

stakeholders including literacy, linguistic, history, and other experts. A supported and shared wealth of professional knowledge encourages an inclusive culture that fosters continuous improvement, collective responsibility and high expectations for students and educators for long-term benefit (Killion, 2012). Focusing on a professional learning culture is what engages and provides interest in reform or openness to change and facilitates the growth of professional capital.

Professional capital is described by Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) as the culmination of interrelated professional aspects that influence teacher practice and which also help to define it. Professionalism refers to how an individual

composes self and carries out his or her work; it is also how an individual is viewed by colleagues in light of their work competency, which impacts on the individual’s perspective of self and of the work done by self. Being a

professional includes being able to carry out tasks to a certain standard required, meeting set expectations and own satisfaction, relating to self-efficacy, and ability, to cope with those expectations. Professional capital involves the practise, perspective and wealth of knowledge through professional experience that a person collects over time, requiring “attention not only to political and societal investments in education but also to leadership actions and educator needs, contributions, and career stages” (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2013, p. 36).

Professional capital is consequently essential and most valued during education or curriculum reform, where the success and longevity of implementation are dependent on the amount of investment or support for growth. Professional

capital involves a combination of three key components: human capital – the personal skills, social capital – interpersonal skills, and decisional capital – the ability to make suitable judgements based on knowledge and experience (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). Professional capital is the dynamic

interrelationship of these components which influence teacher capacity and a teacher’s sense of agency.

According to Hargreaves and Fullan (2012), human capital is the development and application of the useful knowledge and skills that people possess in an organisation. It is the basis of knowledge that can be developed and shared in a community to expand upon and grow relevant to the site or

organisation’s needs (Rowan, 2012b), particularly through sustained or shared

professional development (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012, 2013).

Social capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012) is a measure of the strength of the relationships that people hold internally and externally to an organisation, such as a school, so as to access the existent human capital of teachers and to collaborate meaningfully whilst acknowledging teacher agency. When social capital or relationships are nurtured effectively by superordinate stakeholders, greater institutional, personal and teacher collective efficacy occurs. Teacher collective efficacy is an aspect of teacher perspectives of self-efficacy, referring to a person’s own “judgment of his or her capabilities to bring about desired

outcomes” (Tschannen-Moran & Wolfolk-Hoy, 2001, p. 783) in their role or

performance as teacher (Darling-Hammond, 2003), as a school or cohort. This is a transformational and empowering tool for organisations looking to add value to their cohort during education change. Additionally, social capital adds to positive perspectives and professional satisfaction of the working environment (Hoff Minckler, 2015). However, Chan, Lau, Nie, Lim, and Hogan (2008) suggest that social capital increases susceptibility to negative perspectives of an environment or event, if strained or poor organisational politics prevail. The literature suggests

that internal collegiality thus influences the culture or social capital of a school, indicating the importance of supporting positive, collaborative education

environments through effective communication and acknowledgement of teacher capital. Teacher capital is the professional capital that teachers independently bring to and inform their practice, and which supports teacher agency. Networks or social capital relationships that form teacher capital, are particularly important for smaller schools or jurisdictions where resources may be reduced or where there is a need for wider professional knowledge and experience to assist with implementation or strategies. This assists such cohorts to effectively and suitably adapt teacher skills to address the local context (Loera et al., 2013), through the use of decisional capital.

Decisional capital for teachers, is described by Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) as the capacity through teacher agency, for teachers to make informed choices for their practice. This suggests that through decisional capital, local needs are addressed autonomously whilst also considering for example,

application of larger scale or national mandate. Decisional capital is an aspect of professional capital, which is described as “the wealth or poverty of the collective knowledge or expertise in a profession” (Hargreaves, 2016, p. 130). Decisional

capital helps a teaching cohort make sense of systemic demand such as reform. However, Hargreaves (2016) warns that this decisional capital can be disruptive to superordinate stakeholders who may view knowledge as a negative influence on reform, when decisional capital or teacher input has “not been sanctioned by the system” (p. 130). Decisional capital is an aspect of professional capital which

reflects how capabilities are developed over time via experience, with particular focus on teacher capacity to make professional judgements (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2013). It is the teacher’s “capacity to choose well and make good decisions. It is best thought of as expertise that grows over time” (Fullan, 2016, p. 47). This

consistent and accessible professional learning opportunities to work with reform requirements. The literature suggests that making relevant professional

judgements is developed further by collaborative efforts to discuss issues between colleagues for authentic solutions and learning (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2007). This is problematic if teachers are not supported or enabled to deal with change autonomously or as a cohort,

relinquishing power and control of change to superordinate stakeholders. This highlights the necessity for collegial work to facilitate knowledge and experience through sustained professional learning. In doing so, intelligent use is made of resources and expedient solutions are found by teachers who simultaneously add to their holistic professional capital under shared or immediate circumstances at each career stage, “folding new information into prior knowledge” (Roseler & Dentzau, 2013, p. 620) through the scaffolding of their professional knowledge and strategies. Professional capital “develops educator capacity” (Fullan, 2016, p.

44), which shapes teacher agency.

Teacher agency is an active or dynamic understanding of autonomy in and capacity for teacher practice, by teachers, as the result of long-term investment in professional capital. Teacher agency acknowledges teachers as “complete professionals. They are true pros who are well prepared, sufficiently

paid, properly supported, continuously responsible, and shrewd in judgments after years of inquiry and practice” (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012, p. 185). Teacher

agency is dependent on the professional capital developed by the teachers and the environment of their organisation. Zoltners-Sherer (2008) suggests that all teachers have the power or teacher agency to enact teaching routine or practice, and choose:

to carry out the aspects of the routine in the ways in which they see fit, based on their own goals, expertise, capacity, as well as their perception of the organization’s goals. Additionally, people carry out routines based

on the interactions they have with other people in the organization, the tools that they use, and the context in which their practice lives. (p. 4)

The literature suggests that supportive contexts empower teachers, but that this can be problematised by discourses of the political environment or workplaces, including an often-found lack of superordinate direction and appropriate school culture to facilitate change (Biesta, Priestley, & Robinson, 2015; Horn & Little, 2010; Priestley et al., 2016). An unsupportive school culture leaves teachers to navigate their roles, including during educational change, without certain direction, resulting in confusion and resistance to change.

Teacher agency is entrenched in professional learning communities which must be relevant to teacher needs (Riveros, Newton, & Burgess, 2012), rather than to superfluous politicised or “business-capital interests” (Fullan &

Hargreaves, 2012, para. 17). Teacher agency is an aspect of the teacher as an individual during reform who, with rightfully valued professional capital, should be viewed as professionally capable of localised decision-making and as a valued contributor to the larger decision-making processes. Feldman and Pentland (2003) suggest that teacher agency is specific to the context in which it is

exercised, therefore positioning the teacher as knowledgeable and as an authority with respect to local needs. Here, teacher agency becomes the voice or mediating factor that either complies or shows resistance to large-scale reform. It follows that where agency is decentralised and authority is given to local stakeholders during reform, such as in the implementation of the Australian Curriculum, it is the teacher who should be acknowledged locally and nationally, and be permitted reasonable or sufficient professional autonomy in their practice. Professional autonomy extends to resource selection or intelligent resourcing (Darling- Hammond et al., 2014) for professional learning. This includes professional development in understanding personalised professional needs, access to collegial

mediation, and teachers’ differentiated choices in classrooms for specific learning needs where the teacher, rather than the superordinate authority, knows best (Frostenson, 2015) for their own practice. Therefore, where decentralisation occurs, it is important to examine teacher agency in smaller or localised contexts.

The literature suggests that agency for professional flexibility is important to meet mandate requirements, as “decentralisation of decision-making power

need not automatically imply decreased autonomy at the level of practice, since collective forms of work, preferred by school management, may require it”

(Frostenson, 2015, p. 24). Paradoxically, while teachers believe that they must be in full control to achieve teaching autonomy, the need for open collegial

collaboration or access to social capital in collegial pedagogical content knowledge and teaching experience to facilitate reform, such as that of a new curriculum, means that the teachers who collaborate, often join together from different schools, sectors, and professional cultures, with differing perspectives and motives for their use of the curriculum. This results in disparate conclusions and approaches to new curriculum (Australian Government, 2014b), which implies the need for superordinate instruction or mediation. This is supported by the Melbourne Declaration (Ministerial Council on Education Employment Training and Youth Affairs, 2008), which highlights that organised

implementation of reform, or “action plans” (p. 18), including collaboration between school sectors, will be facilitated by Australian government bodies. This implies the need for transparent superordinate management of collaboration between teachers. Simoncini, Lasen, and Rocco (2014) make note of the direction by superordinate body AITSL, to promote collaborative efforts for teachers to build upon and learn from their colleagues, which would encourage greater professional growth.

The literature suggests that teacher capital and knowledge vary, with teacher collaboration able to increase and improve professional knowledge for praxis

(Hutchison, 2012). However, the literature also suggests that there exists the need for greater clarity through the resources from the issuing governing curriculum body (Australian Government, 2014b), such as ACARA, to assist teachers in their collaborative work. This assertion is supported by an American study by

Ketterlin-Geller, Baumer, and Lichon (2015), which found that collaboration between teachers and education sectors benefits teachers and students, but must be supported by administrators or superordinate stakeholders to organise, “implement and sustain an environment that is conducive to collaboration.

Administrators need to actively build a school culture that values and nurtures collaboration” (p. 57). The study also concluded that professional capital or teacher agency is supported by way of “proactively restructur[ing] existing time

and resources to intentionally facilitate teamwork” (p. 57). Ketterlin-Geller and colleagues’ findings suggest that professional support for teachers will reduce

performance burden on teachers, particularly during reform, whilst investing in, acknowledging, and utilising teacher professional capital. The literature suggests that teacher agency is compromised where unsupported teacher practice (Balkar, 2015) concomitantly does not support effective education reform (Fullan, 2011). Hardy (2016) suggests in his case study of professional learning for teachers, that in order to dissolve the tensions of mandate compliance, focused professional support, such as subject planning and assessment preparation under educational reform, for particular contexts, must be identified to enable effective reform processes. Hardy suggests that focused professional support for teachers must be facilitated with attention to “specificity of support for teachers’ learning as professional practice – the “doings,” “sayings,” and “relatings” in the context of current educational conditions – is an area for further inquiry.” (Hardy, 2016, p. 6). The literature suggests that through focused support, that teachers will also be empowered to continue to work effectively with change whilst improving their subject content knowledge.